[Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

Geoffrey Plourde wrote: Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should first discuss the problem. I brought this up on commons-l before it spread to foundation-l. With the risk of making myself a target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem that I see: Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s. This includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the elderly. We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list. Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design. Perhaps they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from the 1970s. We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia. If patrolling is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions. We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake. This is where we need to improve. It's like having a zero tolerance on crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy. We all speak the same language and we know each other. But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our beginners off to Wikimedia Commons. Even if the menues and most templates are localized in every major language, this is not true of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local language might not be understood by the admins. If the user has good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might not fully understand this. Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two. So many copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only copyright violations are preceived as a problem. Wikimedia Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that need to be sorted out. But that's not my main issue. My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in fostering our local admin community to receive and greet newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment? Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal. That's like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons, somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay within the Swedish Wikipedia. After images have been patrolled locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and only the bot operators would have to deal with the international admin community at Wikimedia Commons. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l